October 2, 2017

He wasn't breathing when he was found, but EMTs were able to find a pulse on Petty. TMZ updated their reporting to say that a source close to the singer alleged that Petty had "no brain activity" when he arrived at the hospital and was later pulled off life support.

There aren't many other artists that have as many immediately recognizable songs as Tom Petty. He's been sort of deeply woven into the American soundtrack over the past 40 years or so. If he dies, it'll be yet another huge loss in what's seemed like a fairly long list of big losses over the past couple years or so.

Petty acknowledged McGuinn as an inspiration. I think he sort of idolized McGuinn. I don't know how McGuinn felt about that, but I suspect he approves of Petty and his music, probably likes it. That's Roger's way, and there's a lot to like.

In my dreams I imagined McGuinn, Petty, and Hillman forming a group, sort of a new and improved Byrds. I got to see McGuinn, Clarke, and Hillman perform (on several occassions), and they were amazing. Petty would have fit right in.

Admittedly I too thought Petty was awfully derivative when he first came out. But then he won me over because it was SUPERBLY derivative of the of I love the most, i.e. the music of Roger McGuinn and the Byrds. In other words: it sounded pretty damn good!

Wildflowers is a wonderful album for when I have to work for a long time at the computer. It doesn't demand to be in the foreground of my attention. It's just pleasant mostly low-key, and gets me over my near-clinical writer's block.

"There aren't many other artists that have as many immediately recognizable songs as Tom Petty. He's been sort of deeply woven into the American soundtrack over the past 40 years or so."

Ha! I still feel like he's a newcomer! I remember well when I first read his band's name in some music magazine and I thought, indignantly, "He stole the name of Johnny Thunders' band, (i.e., The Heartbreakers, with no "so and so and" before the name).

Thunders gained such fame as he had as the "Keith Richards" to David Johansen's "Mick Jagger" in the great! New York Dolls. (Thunders was apparently indignant about it, too. It was likely just coincidence.) Thunders become an inveterate junky and died years ago of leukemia in New Orleans at the age of 38.

I never followed Tom Petty's career, but I liked the songs of his I heard or saw on MTV. I saw Petty and the Heartbreakers just by chance early on, in 1978 in Jacksonville, Florida. He was opening for Patty Smith, whom I'd gone to see. TP and the Heartbreakers were very good and I really enjoyed them. (Patty Smith was great! Mesmerizing!) The ticket price was $2.00!

I saw them in Hoboken, NJ at the great, lamented club, Maxwells. I remember I went outside, either before the show, or after, I can't recall, and Grant Hart was wandering around outside, barefoot in the streets, and I think he was talking to himself. If I hadn't known he was the drummer, I might have thought he was just a drug casualty, lost in a daze.

He was one of my favorites. Kicking myself for not seeing him last year--he roared with this original band Mudcat and played a bunch of smaller venues.

Maybe it's just the age I was when they came out, but I think now my favorites are some of his late 90's stuff. I was into classic rock in HS and had seen Petty live, but that Wildflowers album had a very different sound.

Time to Move On is a favorite.Good to Be KingWildflowersWon't Back DownChristmas Again

Damn he was good. Did well as a voice on King Of The Hill, too. The Traveling Wilburys! Great artist.

Sounds like an aortic blood clot shut him down too long.The loss of brain activity can be overcome with ventilators and tubes which keep the organs going until it becomes transplant time. Remember to get a will drawn by a Lawyer. And you have to time it right before this happens. So many put it off "until the need it."

Blogger Kate said...In Kevin Costner's bomb "The Postman" Tom Petty plays a once famous rocker surviving in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. He puts a self-referential twinkle in his eye and knocks his role out of the park.

Stevie Nicks would quit Fleetwood Mac in a heartbeat if Tom Petty offered her the chance to become a permanent member of his band The Heartbreakers.

Nicks, who joined Petty and his cohorts on the 1981 hits “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” and “Insider,” admits the band has always been her favorite and she’d drop anything if her friend asked her to become a sidekick.

She tells Rolling Stone, “Had Tom Petty called me up one day and said, ‘If you want to leave Fleetwood Mac to be in the Heartbreakers, there’s a place for you’, I might very well have done it. Anytime. Today! Because it’s my favorite band.”

Nicks has previously revealed Petty insisted she was not welcome in his band, telling her the Heartbreakers had a no girls policy. He obviously relaxed that rule when they duetted and he recently gave her a platinum sheriff’s badge with the words ‘To the only girl in the Heartbreakers’ engraved on it.

And I won't back down(I won't back down)Hey, baby, there ain't no easy way out(I won't back down)Hey, I will stand my groundAnd I won't back down

Well I know what's rightI got just one lifeIn a world that keeps on pushin' me aroundBut I'll stand my groundAnd I won't back down(I won't back down)

Hey, baby, there ain't no easy way out(I won't back down)Hey, I will stand my groundAnd I won't back downHey baby, there ain't no easy way out(I won't back down)Hey, I won't back down(I won't back down)Hey, baby, there ain't no easy way out(I won't back down)Hey, I will stand my groundAnd I won't back downNo, I won't back down

No other rock star has done as perfect a song since then. Hook upon hook, jangling guitars, impassioned yet cool vocals, oh-yeah bass harmonics and an ending riff that is fucking Mount Rushmore...

Petty was there as rock split into punk and New Wave and the Eighties, and as the other Rock Stars twirled and coked into post-Seventies oblivion he kept going; Michael Hutchence and Kurt Cobain killed themselves because they could not be as authentic...

Petty understood America, in a way that Bruce Springsteen can only strain to pretend.

"At night we ride through the mansions of glory in suicide machines"?

Fuck that pretentious shit. Here's the Real Thing:

"It was kind of cold that night She stood alone on her balcony She could the cars roll by Out on 441 Like waves crashin' in the beach"

American Girl is a good song.But damn..had a college roommate who would play it over and over in our tiny apartment above Shanghai Minnie's on University Ave. I'd hear that intro start up again and cringe.After a couple decades, was able to appreciate it again.Btw, Petty's daughter is pissed at RS, somehow dragging Trump into it:

@rollingstone my dad is not dead yet but your fucking magazine is ⚡️⚡️⚡️your slime😵 has been pieces of tabloid dog shit. You put the worst artists on your covers do zero research. How dare you report that my father has died just to get press because your articles and photos are so dated. I will fucking shit down your throat and your family's . Try not being a trump vibe. This is my father not a celebrity. An artist and human being. Fuck u

(We inherited the apartment from the Shanghai Minnie family..a one bedroom that they crammed about 5 into. Scalded kitchen sink had to be replaced, trash and food wrappers removed from inside a desk..and eventually fumigation for roaches)

There is an excellent Petty/Heartbreakers doc on Netflix that I watched a few months ago - Runnin' Down a Dream. Highly recommended.

Also, some music trivia I always found neat: Stevie Nicks' lyric "edge of seventeen" came from a question she posed to Petty's then wife. When did you meet Tom? She replied "at the age of seventeen" with a thick accent and Stevie heard "the edge of seventeen". She thought that sounded interesting and used the lyric.

In 1978 I went with Larsen to a girl's house where he was going to buy weed. She was playing an acoustic guitar in the living room and playing Stairway to Heaven so I asked her to show me how. Every budding guitarist wants to learn that! But the real magic happened on the way home when a new song by an artist I'd never heard of came on the radio. With the opening riffs to Breakdown I was hooked. Petty had a singular style, classic rock-n-roll. The Heartbreakers were a tight crew. Man. RIP Tom.

Like many above I highly recommend G. E. Smith's "30 Years of Bob Dylan Special" for the great performances by Roger Guinn and Tom Petty and many others. It was on AXS channel a couple weeks back. Still on my DVR!

Blogger EDH said... His crew always said it was tough to get TP to leave Malibu for the road. On the most recent tour TP looked okay, but he needed a Cushman to get from his dressing room to the bus, even indoors.--How did you come upon that info?At the risk of his daughter shitting down my throat (not into that), I was wondering if he had heart issues at least in part due to Heroin use.

The thing I may respect most about Tom Petty: telling Stevie Nicks "there are no female Heartbreakers" when she wanted to join the band, and writing "Don't Come Around Here No More" about her when he'd had enough of her coked-up ass.

To be fair to Nicks, she eventually got clean and straight, to her enormous credit. But the drama between her and Petty was real.